


dogtooth

by sharptoothed



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Dreams, M/M, another weird atmospheric piece from yours truly, during Hannibal's imprisonment; before Molly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 01:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11658468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharptoothed/pseuds/sharptoothed
Summary: find me manic & you can’t find me. i’m a knobless door. i cook meals for the dead & they eat.hannibal's farther away from will than he's ever been, and will still can't fucking get away from him.





	dogtooth

i.

The first thing he dreams is the smell of blood in his nose.

It comes from the kitchen, a rich dark reek of death and luxury all at once. Blood first, then softer notes; chicken, garlic, onion. What he thinks is chicken. What could be anything else.

He remembers hearing that this soup is the Lithuanian chicken and dumplings. Warm, rich, filling broth for folks in the south, running through Hannibal’s childhood like redeye gravy through Will’s.  _ Juka. _ Duck blood. Anonymous meat.

The soup isn’t prepared in one of Hannibal’s fine Le Creusets but in Will’s own worn-down soup pot, the ingredients prepared on his nicked cutting board with his dull kitchen knives. Hannibal serves it in Will’s cheap Wal-Mart bowls with Will’s half-melted ladle, the one he’d let lean too near the stovetop for too long. It will be better than anything Will has ever served in them, he knows already. Hannibal insists on doing everything himself, playing the host in a house he was not invited into.

“Sit.”

Will does. Like a dog. Hannibal brings his bowl round to his neatly set place at the table, garnishes it with a generous dollop of sour cream. It floats like an island in the sea of blood.

Hannibal sits down across the small table, smiles softly. Nods that Will ought to eat.

He takes a bite, obediently, wakes up, and vomits down his sweat-soaked shirt.

ii.

The next night they are in his living room. Will is seated on the couch. Hannibal, inexplicably, has hold of the scruff of his neck. The dogs sit calmly by, watching, in no hurry to defend their master. The situation isn’t comfortable, but it doesn’t hurt.

“You’ve got me well in hand,” Will remarks.

“Yes,” Hannibal agrees, and his fingertip runs careful over the overgrown spot where once upon a time Will’s hairline was cut square. Will shivers.

“Why?”

He feels Hannibal shrug. “We are in your mind.” Cool, calm, psychiatrist voice. Will hates it. “If I had to make an educated guess, however, I would assume that you need someone to put you on a shorter leash. You feel yourself veering off course.”

Will smiles a little, bitterly. “I wonder why.”

Hannibal tugs his hair a little, tipping his head back, and shows him that tiny smile, just the barest crinkle of the corners of his eyes. The average observer might see nothing. Will knows it is almost unbearably smug. “I think you misunderstand yourself, Will. You are much more stable now than you were at our first meeting. I have done nothing to antagonize you into your present state -- in fact, I am the least capable of antagonism I have been in all the time you have known me.”

“What are you saying?”

Hannibal leans down, his lips grazing the shell of Will’s ear. It’s intimate, more so than Will is comfortable with. “You don’t know what to do with yourself now that I am safely out of your life.” His smirk was audible in his voice. “One could even say you miss me.”

Will jolts awake, cold, shaken. His face is still warm from their proximity.

iii.

Will is alone in his bed, freshly shaken from sleep. Hannibal is leaning casually against the dresser across from him, all cool nonchalance, at home among the ratty blankets, the dust and dog hair, as if he had spent his whole life there in Will’s bedroom. Resting beside him is a tray full of something. Will knows already he doesn’t want it. He cannot bring himself to rise from his sheets and object.

Hannibal brings the tray around. He helps ease Will into a sitting position, as though he is convalescing from some illness, some drugged sleep. Once Will is settled to his satisfaction, he sets the tray in his lap and removes the lid.

“A return of sorts to the first breakfast I served you,” he explains, pleased with himself. “Fried lambs’ brains with boiled Chinese salted ducks’ eggs and challah toast, fried in the fat of the lamb.”

The taste of that first meal melts thick and uncomfortable over Will’s tongue. He knows now what he was eating; he almost wants to retch.

“Before you worry,” Hannibal says quickly, noticing Will’s nausea, “these are truly lambs’ brains. Unfortunately, the human brain is generally considered too dangerous for consumption. One takes on a certain risk of encephalopathy.” He glances at Will’s head. “You’ve had enough of cranial illness, no?”

Will laughs a little, coldly. “Is this the first normal meal you’ve served me?”

“Not the first, no. One of the few. Although I hesitate to describe any of the meals I serve as ‘normal.’”

He seats himself beside him and cuts into one of the lamb brains, pairing it with a bit of toast and dipping the forkful into an egg yolk. He eats it, chews, swallows, eyes on Will, anticipating. He always has such a horrible way of making Will, dogbrained autistic that he is, acutely aware of his own discourtesies.

He eats a little, slowly, and Hannibal smiles. It’s good, as always. Will had thought you couldn’t eat in dreams, but leave it to Hannibal to tear a hole in that theory. At least now he can tell he’s dreaming.

iv.

He wakes, shuddering, to the sound of a tie coming undone, and the tie turns into rope, and the rope binds him to a tree, and Hannibal is standing over him, stroking his hair like a favored pet.

Will has had this dream before. Hannibal tied up as revenge, Will pulling the ropes until he was crushed to death. Needing him to feel some shred of the pain he had caused everyone else. The justice he felt then was nearly orgasmic. Now all he feels is cold terror like a stone in his gut.

“Do you remember this, Will?”

“How could I forget?” He wants to be sardonic but it comes out as almost a whisper, scared.

Hannibal smiles. 

“Come visit me in the hospital, Will, would you? I’m so tired of meeting like this.”

The ropes go taut, tighter, tighter, and then everything goes black, and Will wakes up standing outside in the cold, wearing nothing but his underwear in thirty-degree weather, and he starts sobbing, and he can’t stop for a while.


End file.
